Thousands of people gathered in San Francisco on Sunday to remember the victims of the terror attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Hyper Casher kosher market in Paris — and to make a stand for Freedom of Speech.

The rally took place at San Francisco’s Civic Center, in front of City Hall. Many people held up copies of Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons to show they would not be bullied into silence by terror.

At 2:30 there was a moment of silence as the crowd — probably numbering somewhere between one and two thousand – memorialized the victims without the need for fiery speeches.

Today’s terror attack on Charlie Hedbo, the irreverent French satirical magazine that was one of the few media outlets in France to publish the original “Mohammed cartoons,” is an attempt by Islamic fundamentalists to enforce shari’a worldwide, even on non-Muslims.

We must not let them succeed.

Self-censoring out of fear means self-imposition of shari’a (Islamic law).

Self-censoring out of “respect” (actually just a euphemism for fear) means you are submitting to the terrorists’ worldview.

The way to overcome them in this instance is to overwhelm them with disrespect and mockery.

They can silence one magazine, but they can’t silence the entire Internet.

Every blogger, of every political stripe, be it left, right, and everywhere in between, needs to realize that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the two keystones of your ideology, whatever it may be. You need to make a stand. You need to make these terrorists lose the ideological battle.

And the way to do that is to republish the Mohammed cartoons yourselves. Today. Right now.

Fill the world with images of Mohammed so that the terrorists realize they can never expunge them all.

The original cartoon that started the entire controversy back in 2006, which culminated in today’s terror attack.

Illustration showing Mohammed (on the right) preaching his final sermon to his earliest converts, on Mount Arafat near Mecca; taken from a medieval-era manuscript of the astronomical treatise The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries by the Persian scholar al-Biruni; currently housed in the collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Manuscrits Arabe 1489 fol. 5v).

“Mohammed Cursing the Vines,” German woodcut print, c. 1481. Presumably Mohammed is cursing the vines for producing the grapes that got him drunk.

In 1928, Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company issued a series of advertising trading cards to promote its canned beef extract products. The 1928 card set illustrated six different pivotal points in Mohammed’s life. The most striking of the cards was the second one, seen here, which showed the Archangel Gabriel escorting Mohammed up to the presence of Allah in Paradise — the climax of his legendary “Night Journey.”

The Israeli magazine Nana published this picture showing the aftermath of a four-way orgy involving Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and Buddha.

“Piss Mohammed” is a parody of Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” that incorporates the original controversial Danish cartoon.

“Married to Children,” a parody of the TV sitcom “Married with Children,” lampoons Mohammed’s marriage to the 6-year-old Aisha. It circulated extensively on the Web in the months after the 2006 cartoon crisis.

The caption to this cartoon by Steph Bergol says, in French:
Mohammed (being carried away by devils): “It is a judicial error! I am Mohammed, the prophet!”
St. Peter (with a scimitar through his chest): “Definitely: GUILTY!”

Comedian and pundit Bill Maher is this year’s commencement speaker at the University of California-Berkeley’s winter graduation ceremony.

While Maher’s original invitation to address today’s event was uncontroversial, after an on-air argument he subsequently had with Ben Affleck about the nature of Islam, campus Muslim groups at Berkeley demanded that Chancellor Nicholas Dirks retract Maher’s invitation to speak.

When the chancellor refused, several Muslim and left-wing campus activist groups threatened to “shut down” Maher’s appearance with a large protest.

But since that initial flurry of publicity over a month ago, no announcements have been made of any planned upcoming protests. So when the day finally arrived — today, at 3:00pm – -there was essentially no media around to notice that the planned protest had fizzled to just a handful of silent people holding a couple of signs outside the security area surrounding the venue:

The planned protest originally spooked the administration, who established strict security measures around the graduation ceremony to prevent a Ferguson-style riot or any attempt to crash the event or bring in anything dangerous.

Just days after a new California law redefining rape came into effect, several shocking but unsubstantiated rape allegations have been leveled against fraternities on the UC Berkeley campus.

One stunning university police report cites accusations of a mass rape at the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, where not just one but five victims were supposedly drugged and raped on the same night at the frat house near campus.

In another allegation, a specific perpetrator was named, arrested, and shamed publicly — only to be later declared “factually innocent” as the rape charge was quietly dropped, after his reputation was ruined.

Suspiciously, in most of the cases the charges were not made by victims or witnesses, but rather by third parties long after the fact. These third-party accusations were made either anonymously or by “Campus Security Authorities,” which includes campus political activist groups. In many of the cases, the actual “victims” themselves have not come forward and may not even consider themselves to have been raped.

And even more suspiciously, almost none of the supposed crimes were reported directly to Berkeley’s municipal police force, whose jurisdiction covers campus as well, but instead only to the university police, who are required by recent regulations to log and publicize each accusation.

In not a single case have any of the charges been substantiated, nor have any suspects been indentified or arrested (aside from the one case noted above where the charge was subsequently dropped).

Very few details about any of these cases have been released by the UC Police, so it could be possible that one or more of these allegations could eventually be proven true.

But in light of the other controversial rape claims recently being made at college campuses elsewhere around the country, including the University of Virginia where a traumatic gang-rape allegation first made national headlines and then collapsed under scrutiny, many are questioning whether or not this similarly spectacular rape epidemic at Berkeley could possibly be a political ploy to exaggerate rape statistics, rather than a sincere attempt to capture and punish actual rapists.

The police have released few details about these “crimes” likely because they themselves have no details, other than impossible-to-verify vague claims made by persons not present at the incidents.

“Yes Means Yes” law comes into effect in California, which stipulates that all rape allegations at college campuses statewide be accepted without question, placing the burden on the accused rapist to prove his innocence. It also redefines rape to include any sexual contact that occurs when one participant is intoxicated, or when one participant silently assents to sex without affirmatively declaring “Yes” beforehand and during the act.

The City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) received two separate reports of sexual assault occurring in the fraternities on Saturday, September 27, 2014. BPD has also reported a third sexual assault on Saturday which may have occurred in a fraternity.

UCPD received a third party report from a Campus Security Authority (CSA). In the report the CSA advised that five individuals alleged that they were given ‘roofies’ and were sexually assaulted at the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity located on the 2300 block of Piedmont. … UCPD has provided this information to the City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) who advised that they have received no reports for the activity reported above.

A leadership member of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity contacted a UC Berkeley Campus Security Authority. The leadership member reported that he was contacted by a member of the Berkeley Theta Delta Chi fraternity. The member reported that he had been sexually assaulted by another current UC Berkeley Theta Delta Chi fraternity member. The reporting member stated that there may be other victims. UCPD has provided this information to the City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) who advised that no reported activity of this nature has been reported to BPD.

UCPD received a third party report from a Campus Security Authority (CSA). In the report the CSA advised that a female student alleges that she was drugged and sexually assaulted at a fraternity. The assault occurred approximately two weeks ago on a Saturday after a football game during the daylight hours. UCPD has provided this information to the City of Berkeley Police Department (BPD) who advised that they have received no reports for the activity reported above.

On Wednesday, November 5th, 2014, UCPD received an anonymous letter from a third-party regarding a sexual assault at a fraternity located on Piedmont Avenue. The letter informed us that during the weekend of October 31st, 2014, the victim attended a Halloween party at the fraternity. The third-party reported that the victim believes she was drugged and sexually assaulted by a fraternity member. … The letter has been forwarded to the City of Berkeley Police Department.

On Thursday, November 13th, 2014, a Campus Security Authority (CSA) reported to UCPD an alleged sexual assault that occurred within a campus dormitory. The [informant] informed us that an unidentified victim student was at a fraternity party and was later escorted to her dormitory by a male student, where the alleged assault took place. There are no more details regarding this encounter at this time. A victim or witness has not contacted UCPD at this time.

One might conclude from this timeline that the moment the new sexual assault law was passed, the UC Berkeley fraternities suddenly went on a rape rampage. Alternately, one could argue that people suddenly felt safe to report the kind of rapes that had been committed at fraternities on an ongoing basis for years. But neither option seems likely, especially considering the odd fact that (except in one case) no female victims themselves have come forward, the rapes instead having all been alleged by outside third parties. More likely is that members of campus activist groups, having heard after-the-fact gossip that such-and-such young woman got drunk at a party and slept with a frat brother, decided that this incident (according to the new law) constituted a rape, whether or not the woman herself felt that she had been raped, and they then reported it to a campus department that is required by law to issue a press release about the allegation and register it as an instance of sexual assault for statistical purposes.

Just to be clear: The author and publisher of this article are strongly opposed to rape in all forms, and fully support investigations into all of these allegations — and if there is any substance to them, demand prosecution of the perpetrators. However, we are just as strongly opposed to false rape accusations, which not only can ruin an innocent accused person’s life, but also diminish the seriousness of real sexual assault cases, which will all have an increasing shadow of doubt cast on them each time another claim is proven false.

At the New York event, many people noticed that gee, there sure are a lot of communists at this march. But in Oakland — always on the cutting edge — the entire “climate change” movement at last fully, irrevocably and overtly embraced communism as its stated goal. Any concerns about “optics” or operating in “stealth mode” were abandoned.

The “climate change” “crisis” is now nothing but the latest justification for “total revolution” and getting rid of capitalism forever.

Yes, capitalism itself is the problem. The primary message of the People’s Climate Rally was this: Climate change is caused by capitalism, and merely attempting to reform capitalism will not stop global warming; it is impossible to work within the existing system if we want to save the planet. We must replace it with a new social and economic system entirely.

Until recently, those attacking the capitalist system as the cause of global warming were intentionally a little vague as to what will replace it if we are to solve the problem. But on Sunday in Oakland, that curtain was drawn back and the new system was finally revealed: Communism. Or at least hardcore socialism as Marx defined it — the necessary transitional phase before true complete communism (i.e. no private property, no families, no individualism). Most countries we tend to think of as “communist” actually self-defined as “socialist”: The USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for example, was (as its name reveals) socialist. I point out this detail in case anybody reading this article thinks that the “socialism” advocated at the rally was merely some kind of squishy soft-hearted semi-capitalism; no, it is the same type of socialism one finds in places generally thought of as communist.

Below you will find irrefutable proof that communist ideologies, organizations and phraseologies have completely moved to the forefront of the “climate change” movement. (I was originally tempted to say that the communists, as they are wont to do, have merely “co-opted” environmentalism. But that would imply that the goal of global warming scaremongering was something other than “destroying capitalism” in the first place. At this point I now know that destroying capitalism has always been the goal; the only thing that changed on Sunday is that the mask was dropped.)

This proof will necessarily entail posting a lot of photographs; in situations like this, the only way to conclusively demonstrate a point is through repetition of evidence. One could summarize the evidence with a few shorthand images, but that would leave open the possibility that the case was being overstated. To quash that counter-argument before it arises, I will post lots and lots and lots and lots of images from all over the rally, from the sponsors, to the attendees, to the booths, to the speakers, to show beyond any doubt that the entire rally was thoroughly saturated with communism and socialism to the point where these ideologies were the overarching theme of the event.

Ready? All the photos below were taken at the People’s Climate Rally in Oakland on September 21, 2014.

Do I even need to point out that socialist and communist countries like China, the Soviet Union, North Korea and elsewhere have absolutely appalling environmental histories, past present and future, which far exceed in ecological destruction anything encountered in capitalist societies? No, I don’t need to point that out, because you already know it. You do — but apparently the people at this rally live in a fantasy world where “socialism” is the opposite of “pollution.”

“Capitalism is Killing the Planet. FIGHT FOR A SOCIALIST FUTURE!” This same message from the International Socialist Organization, a self-professed Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyist revolutionary group, was also prominent at the New York climate march.

…The Democratic Socialists of America, a comparatively mild-mannered group who want to make America communist via peaceful democratic transition instead of the violent revolution advocated by most other extreme left revolutionary parties….

…and Freedom Socialist, a lesser-known group who nonetheless managed to gain control of the coveted “socialism.com” URL which they use to promote their radical feminist version of communism in “the living tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.”

Progressive politics is rooted in racism. Look carefully at most social or fiscal policies advocated by progressives and you’ll see that underneath their false public rationales lie hidden racist fears and assumptions — some of which the progressives may be too embarrassed to admit even to themselves, much less to the world.

In modern politics, everyone doubts everyone else’s sincerity. Each side automatically presumes that the other side presents a false public justification for its political views. And in most cases it is wise to doubt, because most public justifications are indeed lies — sometimes unconscious lies. But surprisingly often the hypothesized alternative “true” motivation guessed at by the opposing side is itself completely incorrect. Especially when conservatives come up with theories attempting to explain what to them are mystifying progressive obsessions. What conservatives don’t (yet) know is that under the surface, most progressive positions are motivated by racist attitudes and assumptions felt by white progressives, usually against African-Americans. Progressive positions often seem inexplicable to outsiders because the proposals emanating from them usually manifest as colossal social engineering experiments, which the progressives have only devised as a distraction from the shameful racist motivations at the core.

This essay will likely be eye-opening for conservatives, and infuriating for progressives, who often don’t know their own history and never contemplated the origins of their own belief system. But it’s time to finally bring the uncomfortable truth out in the open.

Below you will find eight separate entries, each focusing on a different policy pushed by progressives. Each entry follows the same format:

BOLD: Name of topic.In yellow: A neutral description of the exact proposal which progressives champion.In red: The progressives’ stated justification or explanation behind their position, which hides their real purpose.In red: The inaccurate theory which conservatives mistakenly assume must be the actual progressive motivation.In green: The true racist reason underlying the progressive policy.
Plain text: Additional notes on the origins of the progressives’ racist attitude and how it led to this specific policy proposal.

If you want to just skim the essay and only read the highlights, then simply look for the green sections and skip the rest. Otherwise, read the whole thing to get a clear step-by-step explanation of the actual racist motivations driving each progressive position.

GUN CONTROL

Progressive position:

Restrict access to guns as much as possible; ultimately ban and confiscate them all.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

Progressives want to disarm the populace to prevent armed resistance to the eventual imposition of a leftist totalitarian police state.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

White urban liberals are deathly afraid of black gangbangers with guns, but are ashamed to admit this publicly, so to mask their racist fears they try to ban guns for everyone, as a way of warding off the perception that their real goal is to target blacks specifically.

The basic dividing line in American politics is not (as it once was ) North vs. South, nor is it (as many people now assume) Coasts vs. Flyover Country, but rather Urban vs. Rural:

The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either — virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer about where people live, it’s about how people live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy — or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants. …The only major cities that voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election were Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City.

Or put more simply: In modern America, liberals live in cities; conservatives live in rural areas. And what else is concentrated in cities? African-Americans, and gun violence:

The 62 center cities of America’s 50 largest metro areas account for 15 percent of the population but 39 percent of gun-related murders.

Putting all these statistics together, we see that large cities have high concentrations of white liberals alongside gun-using black criminals. And yet it is specifically in Democrat-voting big cities where most of the gun-control measures are proposed. Why is that? Are the white progressive urban dwellers afraid of rootin’-tootin’ cowboys? Of backwoods deer hunters? Of hillbillies with shotguns? No: the average white progressive has never even met a cowboy, a hunter or a hillbilly. And frankly, progressives couldn’t care less if rednecks own guns, because progressives aren’t physically afraid of rednecks on a daily basis. Instead, they are afraid of gun violence at the hands of their fellow city-dwellers, the urban African-Americans who commit a wildly disproportionate percentage of the gun crimes in America.

Progressives don’t want to ban guns to disarm resistance to any upcoming police state; that idea has never even occurred to them. Instead, progressives want to ban guns because progressives are afraid of black people.

But God forbid that progressives’ racist motivations be exposed publicly. So to make the gun-control bans appear even-handed and race-neutral, progressives must try to ban guns for everyone, even though the bans are in reality aimed at one specific group. Rural gun-users are just collateral damage of a policy that actually targets inner-city blacks.

JUNK FOOD TAXES

Progressive position:

Impose punitive taxes on all sugary or unhealthy junk food to discourage its consumption; also implement a variety of regulations targeting fast-food chains and producers.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

To improve the overall health of the general public, we should economically pressure people to have a better diet by artificially inflating the price of any food which is bad for them.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

Progressives are control-freaks who derive pleasure from micro-managing everyone’s lifestyle; they particularly delight in banishing the exact kinds of food normally enjoyed by “average Americans,” just out of spite.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

Progressives believe that black people are too dumb to make healthy food choices.

The white liberal elites who propose and vote for junk food taxes (and other food-related regulations) are not the kind of people who even eat junk food; instead, they paternalistically and presumptively try to dictate what other people should and should not eat. Embedded in this attitude is the unspoken assumption that the people doing the dictating (the liberal elites) are smarter than the consumers who unwittingly choose to eat unhealthy food. And who are those consumers? Disproportionally it is African-Americans, as we are frequently reminded by a steady stream of academic studies, articles in magazines and political rants all coming out of the progressive camp. The entire implicit message of this liberal “food politics” movement can be summed up as: Black people are too stupid to make wise nutrition decisions, too childish to resist enticing packaging and ads, and too illiterate to read labels. We white progressives must therefore intervene and in the role of loving parents help blacks learn to like broccoli nummy num num good for you!

CLIMATE CHANGE

Progressive position:

Institute a variety of penalties, taxes and incentives all designed to discourage production and use of carbon-derived energy by industrialized nations.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

This is not a political position: it’s simply a scientific fact that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels then the resulting greenhouse gases will render the planet uninhabitable.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

This so-called “crisis” is just the latest in a long series of fabricated environmental pseudo-crises not based on fact but on an irrational Luddite loathing of civilization; your wildly exaggerated hysteria about “global warming” is merely a mechanism to manipulate and control the citizenry and cripple the economy.

Viewed globally, the real long-term consequence of all the “climate change”-related policy proposals is to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the First World developed nations to the Third World underdeveloped nations, while simultaneously crippling the ability of the developed world to maintain its economic dominance.

What could motivate this seemingly suicidal economic policy by First-World progressives? In a word: Guilt. Specifically, “white guilt” by Europeans (and those descended from Europeans) for having unfairly exploited backward regions and non-white peoples over the last few centuries to establish white economic hegemony over the rest of the world.

This rationale is openly discussed at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, where representatives of Third World nations demand payback and reparations for colonialist exploitation, and where the descendants of those colonialists grovel in abject apology for the wrongdoings of their ancestors.

But deeply embedded in those apologies and guilt is a racism that far surpasses even the naive racism of yesteryear.

If you enter into competition with a rival you deem approximately equal in skill to yourself, and then you win fair and square, then it would never occur to you to apologize for winning nor would you feel guilty about it — because it was a fair fight. On the other hand, if you compete against and then easily defeat an opponent whose very nature you believe makes them inescapably inferior to you — for example, getting in a fistfight with a small child — then afterwards you might very well feel guilty and apologize for taking advantage of a lesser opponent who had no chance against you due to their inherent inadequacy.

So when a modern progressive apologizes for his ancestors’ past colonialist dominance, he is really saying: “I’m so sorry that we smart organized aggressive white people took advantage of you lesser peoples whose inherent cultural and intellectual shortcomings made you incapable of fending us off: it wasn’t a fair fight, and I apologize.”

In other words: Apologizing is an unconscious backhanded way of declaring your innate superiority.

If these modern progressives felt that their ancestors had achieved global dominance by defeating rivals of equal stature, then there’d be nothing to feel guilty about, and thus no need to pay reparations and hence no need to devise the “climate change” crisis and attendant suicidal economic policies.

THE WELFARE STATE

Progressive position:

Maximize benefits and ease qualifications for all entitlement and social welfare programs; ultimately institute a “guaranteed income” for all U.S. residents.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

No one should starve or go homeless in a wealthy nation such as ours; we should always give a helping hand to those in need.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

The ever-escalating magnitude of unnecessary government handouts is just a backdoor route to socialism by confiscating more and more wealth from the productive class and “redistributing” it to the unproductive.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

The true goal of progressive-style cradle-to-grave welfare is to enslave blacks in a culture of dependency and thereby keep them mollified and also a dependable Democratic voting bloc.

The toxic addictive effect of an ongoing welfare system has been debated for centuries; as far back as the 1700s in England it was pointed out that giving free food to the lower classes both removed their motivation to work and also increased their numbers; abusing these sociological trends for cynical political advantage dates back even further, when Roman emperors handed out free bread to curry favor with the masses. In modern America, African-Americans disproportionally comprise the lower class, so progressives have devised a racist strategy of lifelong government dependency to not only permanently keep blacks at the bottom of the economic scale but also corrode their sense of self-sufficiency so that they always return to the Democratic Party just as the addict always returns to the pusher.

According to Ronald Kessler’s book Inside the White House, President Johnson explained the rationale behind his “Great Society” welfare programs thus: “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” As there is no audio recording of this quote (which was reported second-hand), progressives have spent years trying to cast doubt on its existence, because it confirms the worst assumptions behind the justification for welfare. However, there are other audio recordings from the same era of Johnson obsessing over maximizing black votes and referring to them as “niggers” — for example, listen to this tape of Johnson complaining that he can’t prove black voters are being suppressed because “More niggers vote than white folks.” While this doesn’t conclusively prove he also said the disputed “200 years” quote, it does prove that he spoke in those terms, referred to blacks insultingly, and schemed about ways to maximize the black vote for the Democratic Party — all of which lend credence to the disputed quote’s likely veracity.

What can’t be disputed is that since the institutionalization of welfare, Johnson’s cynical racist vision has come true: generation after generation of inner-city African-Americans have indeed become completely dependent upon welfare, and consequently reliably vote Democratic because the Democrats vow to keep the handouts flowing.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Progressive position:

Give preferential treatment to African-Americans and Hispanics in college admissions and employment; ultimately impose compulsory “minority quotas” on universities and employers.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

The legacy of discrimination suffered by minorities is a terrible historical crime that needs to be reversed; a strong undercurrent of discrimination still exists in America and only by giving a boost to underprivileged minorities can we break the cycle of stereotype-confirming poverty.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

Affirmative action is just a form of reparations under a different name, and a way to collectively punish all white people for the long-ago crime of slavery.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

White progressives believe that blacks are intellectually inferior and will never be able to compete successfully in education and the job market, and so seek to create a permanent system in which the assumption of black inadequacy is the starting point for an insulting double-standard of judging blacks on a lower scale.

When Affirmative Action was first proposed in the 1960s it was touted as a way to reverse a long history of what had been up until that time real discrimination against various minority groups. At first, the regulations merely (and reasonably) stipulated that all groups be treated equally with no prejudice. Over time, however, the requirements escalated, first from “equal treatment” to “if two candidates of different races are identically qualified, then admit or hire the minority,” and then to “give minorities preferential treatment, even if they are less qualified,” and finally to “institutions must admit or hire a certain number of minorities, regardless of their qualifications and even if there are better-qualified non-minority candidates.” While the courts have since struck down some of the more extreme “quota” laws, progressives in states across the country and on a federal level still strive to preserve and further extend Affirmative Action wherever possible.

In an era when Jim Crow laws were still fresh in people’s memories, the original even-handed version of Affirmative Action made sense. But from the very beginning it was meant only as a temporary measure, to expunge any lingering unofficial racial discrimination after all remaining overtly discriminatory laws were wiped away nationwide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Starting in 1965, it was illegal to discriminate against minorities anyway, so technically Affirmative Action was not even needed — which is exactly why its backers began the process of escalation, to justify more extreme measures.

The first escalation was to redefine Affirmative Action not simply as a guarantee of non-discrimination, but instead as a way to reverse historical injustices: Since minorities (African-Americans in particular) had endured official disadvantages in the past, they should now receive official benefits, to help them overcome the continuing effects of economic hardship from the bad old days. If we allow more African-Americans into college and give them more high-paying jobs, the argument went, they can more quickly become middle-class and break out of the cycle of poverty. And once that happens, we will end the temporary Affirmative Action programs.

But as the years passed and the expected class mobility didn’t materialize as quickly as hoped, progressives pushed for more and more extreme Affirmative Action measures, until a line was crossed and “Affirmative Action” became little more than an ironic euphemism for overt discrimination against whites and Asians, especially in situations where there were a limited number of openings at prestigious institutions and yet some of the best candidates were being turned away because of the color of their skin. In the final twist, laws originally meant to prevent discrimination had become laws compelling discrimination — albeit against different groups.

Fifty years and several generations have since passed, and the days of official and even unofficial discrimination against minorities in education are but a distant memory. If anything, attitudes and curricula across the country are more minority-centric than they have ever been, and promising minority K-12 students are greeted with open doors, mentoring, scholarships and encouragement at every turn. While we may applaud that, this happy new status quo undermines any justification for maintaining Affirmative Action in college admissions and employment. No longer can anyone believably claim that minorities endure discrimination in school; so why does society continue awarding them benefits not merely denied to others but in fact yanked away from others?

The average non-racist sensible person believes that African-Americans could do just as well as members of any other race in education and employment, but that cultural attitudes in the black community are what prevents this from happening as much as everyone would want. And all the Affirmative Action in the world won’t fix this, because it’s a mere band-aid that in no way addresses the root of the problem. If anything, Affirmative Action contributes to the cultural problem by communicating to blacks that society expects less of them, and also that they need not strive for excellence because they’ve got a college admission or job awaiting them regardless of how hard they work for it.

Progressives, on the other hand, are that class of whites who think blacks will never ever perform as well as other races because, the progressive has concluded, blacks are just too dumb to succeed in a truly meritocratic society. To address this intractable problem, and simultaneously try to paint themselves as being “helpful” to blacks, progressives have established a degrading and humiliating system of low standards which apply only to blacks (and other “underrepresented minorities” as an afterthought). They give this insulting system the truly Orwellian euphemism “Affirmative Action”; the only thing affirmed by it is that the people promoting this system must have a truly low opinion of blacks. Critics have pinpointed this attitude as the “soft racism of low expectations,” but there’s nothing “soft” about it: By insisting on the permanent institutionalization of Affirmation Action, white progressives are declaring right up front that they expect blacks as a group to always fail due to their average lesser mental capabilities. There’s no other way to explain the progressive stance — even if some progressives are unaware of their underlying assumptions.

Studies have shown again and again that the way to raise performance is to raise expectations. Want African-Americans to succeed academically and economically? Expect excellence. Set high standards and high goals. When you lower the bar, you reveal that you have no faith in their potential.

PLASTIC BAG BANS

Progressive position:

Prohibit businesses from giving plastic bags to customers.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

Discarded plastic bags harm the environment and befoul the landscape; we should be kind to the Earth by using cloth or paper bags instead.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

Leftists have an illogical phobia about plastic, because to them it symbolizes artificiality and consumerism; they’re trying to outlaw an extremely useful invention simply to make shopping and capitalism more inconvenient.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

White progressives specifically want to stop inner-city blacks from littering, but don’t want to be perceived as racists who further penalize the black community for its behavior, so rather than focus on whom they believe to be the actual perpetrators of littering, they remove from everyone‘s hands any objects which might potentially become litter.

Litter is a problem confined almost entirely to urban areas (suburban and rural areas have much less litter); and the poorer the neighborhood, the worse the litter problem. Rather than admit publicly what they believe to be true — that inner-city African-Americans seem to more cavalierly discard their garbage on the street — progressives seek to solve the problem by penalizing everyone, even those who don’t litter, so that the anti-littering enforcement won’t seem to focus disproportionally on blacks, which would appear racist and discriminatory. In other words, even though progressives believe blacks are primarily to blame for littering, progressives — merely to protect their own public image — will make everyone suffer, rather than implement existing anti-littering laws against whom they think are the actual perpetrators.

ABORTION

Progressive position:

Make abortion as accessible as possible; ultimately remove all restrictions from abortion, eliminating any financial cost, social stigma, and legal constraints.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

Women should have control over their own bodies; legal and shame-free abortion is necessary for sexual freedom; medical choices are a private decision between doctor and patient.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

Progressives prioritize their own amoral selfish pleasure over the lives of others; abortion is just another way that the far left is trying to destroy the nuclear family; environmentalists see humanity as the only contaminant in nature; by rejecting God the left has embraced and revels in a culture of death.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

The movement to legalize abortion was from its inception intended as a way to decrease the black and minority population, and the statistics show that a highly disproportionate percentage of aborted babies are black. The desire to preserve “racial purity” and to prevent over-breeding of the “lower” races and classes was the overt and publicly pronounced goal of the pro-abortion progressive eugenics campaign in the early 20th century; only after eugenics fell from public favor did the leftists devise deceptive new narratives to justify abortion. White progressives still believe that blacks cannot control their sexuality and are too irresponsible to use birth control reliably, so the only way to keep them from overpopulating is to keep abortion legal and cheap or free.

A recent informal survey of well-educated pro-life conservatives, asked to identify what they think really motivates pro-abortion progressives, revealed what were far and away the five most popular theories:

• Hedonism and Selfishness — Progressives want consequence-free sex and the ability to indulge themselves without guilt or responsibility.

• Marxism and the Destruction of the Nuclear Family — The left seeks to erode the basic man-woman-child family unit because to do so is a necessary precursor for state control over the individual, according to Marxist theory.

• Environmental Extremism – Modern leftism is fundamentally anti-human and regards humanity as a plague infecting an otherwise pristine planet; abortion helps to rid the Earth of people.

• Transgression and the Lust for Power — Some people simply derive pleasure from the subversion of traditional values and engage in transgressive acts for the sheer anarchic joy of overturning entrenched social ethics.

• Evil and Moral Relativism — Having rejected God and the concept of moral absolutism, the left has embraced evil, which is always accompanied by a love of death.

While there may be a kernel of truth to some of these theories, the real explanation is much more prosaic and doesn’t involve guesswork, because it can be plainly found in the historical record: racism.

Imagine if the situation was reversed and it was conservatives who championed a policy that directly resulted in the demographic genocide of blacks: we’d never hear the end of it, and it would be cited by pundits daily as conclusive proof that conservatives are racist. But when progressives in fact champion such a policy? Silence.

Is the sky-high rate of black abortion merely accidental? Or was it the long-term goal of the family-planning movement from the beginning?

The answer to this question has devolved into a fight over the motivations of one woman, Margaret Sanger, who was America’s leading proponent of birth control in the early 20th century and who founded the organization now known as Planned Parenthood. Why Sanger? Because she’s basically the only birth control advocate from the era who wasn’t blatantly racist; most of her colleagues in the eugenics movement just came right out and said society would be better off without so many non-whites. Only Sanger was able to construct a reassuring birth control narrative that didn’t focus exclusively on race. Modern pro-choice activists thus realize the need to protect her reputation at all costs, because if Sanger is shown to have had racist attitudes too, there are no other heroes left, and the entire movement will be sullied from its inception.

The problem arises when anti-abortion activists try to pad out all the irrefutable evidence with a few too-bad-to-be-true Sanger quotes about the need to “exterminate” “negroes” — quotes which, upon closer inspection, were either originally said by others and merely re-quoted by Sanger (“The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit,” originally said by W.E.B. DuBois, later re-quoted approvingly by Sanger), or are open to interpretation (“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” which she did indeed write, although it’s not clear whether she was trying to suppress a false rumor or instead hide the terrible truth), or in a handful of cases seem to have been simply made up (“Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated,” a purported Sanger quote for which no reliable source has ever been found).

For the purpose of this essay I decided to ignore all second-hand accounts and read some original Sanger source material myself. It only took me an hour to conclusively document several egregious Sanger quotes, which (to keep this essay brief) I uploaded here as a separate post which you can read in detail if you need definitive proof. In short: Yes, Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist; yes, she sought to decrease the population of the “unfit” and “feeble-minded”; and yes, the unfit included not just “negroes” but also immigrants, foreigners and anybody except those of “pure native white stock.”

One of the problems in pinning down Sanger’s attitudes about blacks is that her public views changed over time. In the 1910s and ’20s she often casually cited “negroes” as examples of the very kind of “feeble-minded” “defectives” which needed to be sterilized or otherwise prevented from breeding; but by the 1940s her tone had changed considerably, arguing that it was for black people’s own happiness and health that they should have only as many children as they could afford.

Sanger herself acknowledged that in the 1920s she gave a speech about eugenics and abortion to the Ku Klux Klan, though she never specified whether she advised the Klan to limit the number of white babies in the world or instead reassured them that she was helping to decrease the black population. The fact that “a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered” immediately after her speech leads one to believe she hadn’t lectured them on the overpopulation of lower-class whites.

Even so, by the 1940s she had somehow reinvented herself as an advocate for black self-improvement. Had she changed with the times, or merely found a better way to package her toxic beliefs?

A key Sanger essay, overlooked by most researchers, published in 1921 and now hosted by the progressive New York University Margaret Sanger Collection, matter-of-factly spills the beans that her birth control activism is all a deceptive ploy, mere “propaganda” to sneak her real agenda — eugenics — into public policy:

…I have time only to touch upon some of the fundamental convictions that form the basis of our Birth Control propaganda, and which, as I think you must agree, indicate that the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics. …

Birth Control propaganda is thus the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator. In answering the needs of these thousands upon thousands of submerged mothers, it is possible to use this interest as the foundation for education in prophylaxis, sexual hygiene, and infant welfare. The potential mother is to be shown that maternity need not be slavery but the most effective avenue toward self-development and self-realization. Upon this basis only may we improve the quality of the race.

As an advocate of Birth Control, I wish to take advantage of the present opportunity to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the “unfit” and the “fit”, admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit though less fertile parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

Birth Control is not advanced as a panacea by which past and present evils of dysgenic breeding can be magically eliminated. Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism.

All over the world, where the subject is studied, we find biologists concerned over the fall in the level of intelligence, and the increase in the number of those of low I.Q. …

Although the multiplication of the unfit is a world problem, we are here concerned with its impact on this country primarily.
…

The authors in questioning the possibility that such families may be producing children of superior quality point out that one must be optimistic indeed, to believe in such a possibility, if one may judge from intelligence levels in comparable groups elsewhere, which have been found uniformly below par.

The Charity Organization Society in New York in testing 451 representative children under its care found the median I.Q. 86. That of 821 children in Indianapolis was the same, while of 1,500 women admitted as charity obstetrical patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, 39% of the whites and 70% of the negroes were found to have a mental age of 11 years or less.

Clear enough? Sanger herself freely declared that birth control activism (which in the modern era has boiled down to the issue of abortion) was just a ruse to implement eugenic policies by another name — and her eugenic policies most definitely had a racial component.

NANNY STATISM

Progressive position:

The government should assume the role of a benevolent parent, guiding and prodding people to make better, safer and healthier decisions in their personal lives.

False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position:

The average person can become overwhelmed by the infinitude of options and often conflicting pressures of the modern world; by restricting people’s ability to choose bad options, we will enhance individual lives and improve society as a whole.

Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent:

Progressives derive sadistic pleasure from wielding power over people; leftism is not a valid political philosophy but rather a transparent justification for fascistic population control.

The actual racist origins of the progressive stance:

White progressives think blacks need constant monitoring and micromanagement to prevent them from misbehaving; but to avoid the perception that they are racists, progressives devise rules which restrict everyone’s freedom, even though the real goal is to control blacks.

Several of the entries above — junk food taxes, gun control, plastic bag bans, etc. — are examples of what has come to be known as “nanny statism,” a political philosophy of paternalistic government control which in the public mind typifies modern progressivism.

Do progressives really believe that all Americans need to be told how to live their lives? Well…no. This country managed to exist for 200 years during which time people were pretty much left to their own devices.

But that’s because for most of those 200 years most of the laws and regulations — including the absence of laws and regulations around most topics — were envisioned (to be historically frank) as applying to a mostly white population. As brutal and tactless as that may sound now, the fact is that until the second half of the 20th century the concerns surrounding black Americans (to the extent that they may have differed from those of white Americans) were pretty much near the bottom of the legislative priority list most of the time (Civil War excepted).

But over the last half-century, progressives and the progressive worldview have risen to legislative dominance, starting slowly in the 1960s and increasing in power and stridency in recent years, and suddenly the nation has become entangled in web of intrusive, inconvenient and sometimes downright insulting regulations all designed to manipulate, monitor and control our private decision-making and public behavior. Why now, and not before?

Here’s why: In conjunction with this rise in paternalistic micromanagement, white progressives have proudly stated that for the first time in U.S. history the concerns of blacks will now be given priority. And this is no coincidence. In fact, it is because progressives now aggressively push their agenda and because that agenda often concerns the behavior of African-Americans that we have seen an outbreak of nanny statism. The secret is this:

White progressives believe that black people are too dumb to make rational decisions on their own and too uncouth to behave civilly. So the progressive urge is to heap rules upon rules to control blacks and render them harmless to themselves and others. At the same time, progressives are terrified of being perceived as racist. So they hit upon a solution: Make rules which restrict everyone‘s freedoms, even though the progressives are actually targeting African-Americans. The collateral damage in this cynical equation — law-abiding citizens of all ethnicities — erroneously assume that the intrusive rules are aimed at them. But they’re missing the point: Progressives don’t enjoy restricting their own freedoms along with everyone else’s, but can conceive of no other legal mechanism to deal with what they see as misbehaving blacks while still appearing to be race-neutral.

Nanny statism is the modern progressive version of Jim Crow: regulations whose real intent is to oppress blacks, but now hidden behind the smiley-face mask of universal oppression.

February 14 has rolled around again, and we all know what that means — right?

No, you silly, not Valentine’s Day. That’s heteronormative and has thus been condemned to the dustbin of history.

And no, it doesn’t even mean V-Day, the rape-themed anti-holiday invented to promote Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues. V-Day has gotten stale.

Instead, February 14 is now 1 Billion Rising day, Ensler’s new dance-oriented hijacking of her own V-Day which was itself a hijacking of Valentine’s Day. The thesis behind 1 Billion Rising is that if the world’s one billion rape victims all rose up en masse and danced every February 14, then rape would cease to exist because unicorns and rainbows.

I attended San Francisco’s second annual 1 Billion Rising event, one of many similar events held in cities around the world.

We gathered in front of San Francisco’s City Hall at 4 p.m. for the ecstatic festivities. Would we reach one billion participants and stop rape forever?

The event’s own official Web page reveals that only 71 people RSVPed, which seems about right, considering that well over half the people on hand were the organizers, performers, staff, volunteers, speakers and security.

Organizers might counter my dismissal by pointing out that the San Francisco event is only one out of “hundreds” of 1 Billion Rising events around the world, but even their own promotional video, shown here as part of a TV news report, reveals that most of those other events are even smaller.

1 Billion Rising? More like a few thousand, grand total, worldwide. The problem with overselling yourself with a grandiose name is that when you fail to meet your promise, you look foolish. And unimportant. And small

In the final analysis, like all “protest movements” 1 Billion Rising is selling a product — in this case the notion that rape and wife-beating are an emergency crisis that deserves more attention and money than other crises — and to sell any product in America you need pretty girls. Except in this case they aren’t draped over the hood of a sportscar or putting on the season’s latest fashions; instead, they’re chosen to stand on stage and hold the official signs. Yet since the entire ethos of 1 Billion Rising is to oppose the objectification of women, well…am I getting dizzy or are the fumes of cognitive dissonance filling the room?

The main problem I have with 1 Billion Rising and V-Day and SlutWalk and all the rest is that they are purposeless — protests “against” a non-existent strawman. The only legitimate rationale behind having any kind of political protest is to support one side or the other in a contested ideological battle. But in this case, we’re protesting against rape, even though there is nobody in this country who supports rape.

Sure, there are rapists out there, but I kinda get the feeling none would go to a rally like this to have their minds changed, and they sure as hell don’t care what a bunch of protesters have to say on the topic (presuming on the off-chance that a rapist would ever hear of events like these, which is extremely doubtful). Rapists already know that rape is “wrong,” but somehow that knowledge never dissuaded them in the past. Furthermore, there already are laws against rape and sexual abuse — laws with amongst the most severe punishments in our legal system. So: everybody (except for psychopaths) already hates rape. Rape is already as illegal as it can be. Rape is universally loathed. What more do you want?

In response to my criticism, the organizers claim that the message of 1 Billion Rising is not directed at men/rapists, but rather at women/victims, and that the purpose is to “empower” victims and “raise awareness” of the problem. Take, for example, this quote from one of the organizers of the S.F. event:

“I stand here as a woman with my strength and power. And say it’s not okay anymore. We have to stop this,” Lyn Augstein said.

Critics have questioned the impact of the global dance initiative but in interviews published Friday, organizers declared the dancing has had a tangible impact.

“I had a vision that the one billion women who will be raped or beaten in their lifetime, I had a vision of them and all the men who loved them rising and dancing to end violence against women.”

Missing from these quotes is any explanation of how “standing here as a woman with my strength and power” and “rising and dancing to end violence against women” will miraculously translate into a lower crime rate. What we have here is a classic example of “magical thinking,” which confuses symbolic gestures with effective action. One is reminded of The Ghost Dance of the 1890s, in which Native Americans tried to stop the advance of Western Civilization by engaging in a series of dance rituals. Needless to say, the Ghost Dance was ultimately futile, as will be the dances of 1 Billion Rising.

Despite this, the joke’s on me, because Ensler has already raised $100 million to promote her dance project. Perhaps the name refers not to the number of participants, but rather Ensler’s fundraising goal: $1 Billion Rising out of your pockets into our bank account.

Enough with the overview. Let’s get down to details!

A group of hardcore radicals joined the 1 Billion Rising event but at first stood at the other end of the plaza from the main stage, where they announced through megaphones that they were going to tear up pornography and Bibles, to make the point that both Christianity and the sex industry are part of the patriarchy oppressing women, and equally to blame. They tore up porn and the wind scattered it around the plaza.

I came in close to try to see the torn-up Bibles too, but instead the porn just blew in my face.

After they left and rejoined the main event in front of City Hall, I sifted through their protest litter and discovered that they hadn’t torn up actual Bibles, but rather signs on which Bible quotes had been written.

Each attendee was handed a placard on which was printed “This is what JUSTICE looks like” followed by a blank area that we were supposed to fill with our visions of justice. Having completed the placards, we then had our souvenir pictures taken in the 1 Billion Rising photo tent.

Most of the messages were predictably feminine and psychological…

…but there were a few hardcore definitions of justice that were much more practical and effective and which I could therefore get behind enthusiastically (at least the nuts-and-bolts punishment part, not the passive-aggressive psycho-babble).

Planned Parenthood drew a small crowd by handing out free t-shirts. Except — there was a catch. In order to get your “free” t-shirt, you had to first sign your name on some petition they had. It later dawned on me: isn’t it illegal to pay people for signatures on petitions? And isn’t a t-shirt a payment-in-kind, a bribe of sorts?

Despite the borderline illegality of it all, they had plenty of takers, and soon all the t-shirts were gone, and the petition was filled with signatures. Hey, whatever it takes — right?

When Obama’s motorcade rocketed around San Francisco on Monday, very few locals even noticed his presence, and fewer still cared. The crowds awaiting him at each presidential fundraiser were by far the smallest I’d seen in over five years of covering his visits here. Ticket sales to at least one of the events were so sluggish that prices had to be lowered to fill the empty seats. Out in the street, rubberneckers and protesters had dwindled to the bare minimum. This is what happens when a hero disappoints: you don’t turn on him in anger, but rather just tune him out and move on to other interests.

Yet even with the small turnout, there was a theme amongst Obama’s protesters/supporters (supportesters?): They didn’t want him to change his political agenda — instead, they demanded that he assume dictatorial powers so that he could finally implement the radical plans with which they already agree. The message of the day was: Stop dilly-dallying around, Mr. President: Ignore the Constitution and just make The Revolution happen, as you promised!

That message would be disturbing enough all on its own, but it becomes much more disturbing when you suspect (as I do) that many of these pro-totalitarian protesters were astroturfed. In other words: Is the White House scripting/encouraging/guiding protesters on the left to beg him to become a dictator? So that later, he can explain, “I had no choice — the people demanded it!” Or is Obama simply telegraphing to his supporters that they should not be so disappointed when he throws in the towel and gives up even trying to achieve anything in his second term?

Let’s see what happened on Monday, and you can judge for yourself.

Obama’s first fundraiser of the day was at the Betty Ong Recreation Center, on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. To deflect the constant criticism that he merely treats the city as a big ATM machine, this time he decided to give one “substantive” speech during the visit, on the topic of immigration. About 40 immigration activists showed up to — well, “protest” isn’t really the right word.

The leaders of the group handed out press releases to anyone who was interested.

As you can see in this zoomed-in image, they were urging Obama to “use his executive power” to simply declare immigration laws into or out of existence, bypassing the Congress and the democratic process.

Inside the event, the exact same thing happened — on stage! One of the human props standing behind the president during his speech suddenly started shouting at Obama to change immigration laws by imperial decree. Obama turned around and allowed the heckler to speak his mind, and then even let him remain on stage as Obama patiently explained that, as frustrating as it might be to activists, the president can’t simply wave a magic wand and make laws disappear. Needless to say, Obama was roundly praised for hearing the guy out, and for allowing him to stay, and then giving him a wise answer.

Was this simply a case of a human prop gone wild? Well, as was obvious to many viewers (watch the interchange in the video above and come to your own conclusions), the whole interaction was likely a scripted set-up: the heckler was a stand-in for all the activists to Obama’s left who are frustrated that Obama isn’t more “forceful” in exercising unconstitutional executive decrees; Obama’s response was not just to the one guy on stage but to all his frustrated allies on the far left. And of course it was all pre-arranged to make Obama look reasonable and heroic.

“Somebody keeps on yelling, ‘executive order,’” Obama said. “I’m going to actually pause on this issue because a lot of people have been saying this lately on every problem, which is just, ‘Sign an executive order and we can pretty much do anything and basically nullify Congress.’” When people started applauding, Obama said, “Wait, wait, wait. Before everybody starts clapping, that’s not how it works. We’ve got this Constitution, we’ve got this whole thing about separation of powers. So there is no short-cut to politics, and there’s no short-cut to democracy. We have to win on the merits of the argument with the American people, as laborious as it seems sometimes.”

Outside was a slightly larger cluster of our old buddies, the anti-Keystone Pipeline activists who have tailed Obama at every public event for the last two years.

But here too the protesters, who were in essential agreement with Obama on every issue, had one demand: That Obama “alone” set national energy policy, bypassing Congress, the democratic process, and the will of the people. Just like the immigration activists at the first fundraiser, and just like the hecklers at both events, these supportesters were frustrated that Obama hasn’t yet fully enacted all of his promised radical agenda via standard constitutional methods, so their proposed solution is for him to start ruling by decree — or “executive order” as it’s called, to make it sound more palatable.

But here’s the thing: as I noted during an earlier Obama visit to San Francisco, the anti-Keystone “protesters” are not opposed to his agenda — they are in fact part of his agenda, bit players in the White House’s endless political theater, giving him cover to make unpopular decisions, citing public opinion (as evidenced by these ginned-up “protests”) to justify his one-sided actions:

This explains how people who voted for Obama can be out in the street seemingly to protest “against” him. Turns out this whole protest was nothing more play-acting for the cameras, a group of faux protesters colluding with Obama to create a Potemkin “movement” which he can then cite as justification for making an unpopular decision he already wanted to make anyway. “I had no choice — there’s a mass movement against this pipeline! I must bow to the will of the people.”

I find it very disturbing that actual grassroots protesters would be willing to dispense with the U.S. Constitution and welcome a dictatorship simply in order to get their way on this or that specific political issue. (It might seem like a good idea at first, but that way lies tyranny.) Yet I find it even more disturbing that the Obama administration could be astroturfing (as in the case of the heckler) or at a minimum encouraging and facilitating (as with the anti-Keystone activists) the very “protesters” who call on him to assume totalitarian powers.

These socialized medicine advocates outside the second event don’t seem very well-funded, and so might be true grassroots protesters, but I’m quite sure that they too would be overjoyed if Obama simply made H.R. 676 become law by presidential fiat, even if so doing was unconstitutional and meant the end of representative democracy.

There are two ways to interpret these bizarre theatrical skits involving Obama and his supporters.

Innocent Theory #1 is that Obama is essentially announcing to his base via these symbolic heckling exchanges that he no longer has the political will to issue as many power-grabbing executive orders as he’s done up til now, and that The Revolution has been put back on hold. “Ram through the progressive wish list with brazen executive orders? Why, I couldn’t do that (any more, at least) — it’d be unconstitutional!” Theory #1, if true, would certainly be in response to plummeting poll numbers and the sobering reality that the Republicans are now almost certain to maintain control of the House of Representatives in 2014, meaning Obama is conceding that he has been effectively stymied, and is thus warning his supporters not to get their hopes up.

Sinister Theory #2 is that Obama is staging these repeated calls for him to assume dictatorial powers as a way to later justify his actions when he amps up and redoubles his unconstitutional executive orders. “I wanted to be a passive and humble president, I really did — but the public demanded that I seize power, so I had to obey the people!” Theory #2, if true, would be based on the fact that Obama is a lame duck president and thus immune from any need to remain “electable”: He could basically do whatever he wanted for the next three years, however extreme, and “get away with it” since he never has to run for office again and Congress obviously will never impeach him at this stage of the game.

To conservatives prone to fearing the worst from Obama I ask: Do you think Theory #1 is correct, or Theory #2?

To progressives calling on Obama to rule via executive order I ask: What’s more important — preserving our system of government, or winning political victories at any cost?

While a horrified world watches the images coming out of Kenya in the aftermath of the massacre at a Nairobi mall perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists, another less bloody but just as morally reprehensible atrocity unfolded online: the sickeningly biased coverage of the attack produced by some mainstream media outlets determined to provide cover for the jihadists.

The BBC’s lead story this afternoon was almost a study in journalistic malfeasance: an archetypal example of how left-leaning Western journalists will violate their own consciences — and the basic principles of reporting — in their relentless quest to hide the truth.

Such bias happens every day, and complaints about it happen just as often, but the sheer volume and speed of partisan reporting makes it difficult to highlight a single example. Even so, let’s pause for just a moment and dissect this typical specimen of ideological media spin.

The article under discussion can be found here — at least for now. Since media outlets often delete articles which they later find embarrassing, I can’t guarantee it will be online forever, so to preserve the evidence I took a screenshot, which you can see here.

Sections of the screenshot are pasted in below as illustrations.

How the BBC Intentionally Obfuscates the Facts

In traditional reporting, all the vital information in any news story should be featured right at the beginning, in an article’s three key elements:

The headline

The lede

The nut graf

Everyone knows what a “headline” is, but the other two terms are journalists’ lingo:

The “lede” in any story is generally defined as its first sentence. In a human interest feature story it’s allowable for the lede to be an anecdote or amusing observation — but in a hardcore news article like this the lede is always supposed to summarize the germane facts of the story. (The headline, of course, should be a condensed version of the lede.)

The “nut graf,” which is short for “nutshell paragraph,” is a single paragraph which gives all relevant information in a further elaboration of the lede. As expected, in news reporting the “nut graf” is always supposed to be the first paragraph of any story (although in feature journalism, which is not what we’re discussing here, the nut graf can appear later in the story).

So, what are the essential pieces of information about today’s Kenya incident? Most everyone (including the perpetrators) would agree that:

Islamic fundamentalist terrorists purposely targeted an exclusive mall in Nairobi frequented by non-Muslims in order to massacre infidels.

So: How does the BBC communicate this information to its readers in its headline? Behold:

Right off the bat, even in the headline itself, the BBC commits a litany of egregious and inexcusable journalistic errors.

The first and most obvious blunder is the missing subject. Who did what? Well, according the the BBC, an entity called a “shoot-out” committed mass murder in Nairobi. Note how there are no human actors in the headline. It wasn’t people who killed 11, it was an inanimate and leaderless “shoot-out” that killed 11.

This is a basic grammatical snafu which even freshmen journalism students quickly learn to avoid. But not the BBC, apparently.

On a second, more subtle, level, use of the word “shoot-out” implies that there were two equal combatants involved, and that therefore blame can be spread around to everyone. But as we know, it wasn’t at first a “shoot-out” — it was a group of terrorists massacring unarmed non-Muslims. (Only much later, after police arrived, did it devolve into a shoot-out.)

Since the BBC has been one of the world’s leading media outlets for nearly a century, and in previous generations set the global standard for news-writing guidelines, they have absolutely no excuse for writing a headline like that — they can’t claim “We’re new at this kind of thing” or “We’re just bloggers — cut us some slack.” No. The BBC literally wrote the book on how to write proper headlines. And if they write a poor headline like this, it must be on purpose.

If you have any pull with the American Psychiatric Association, could you please recommend to them that the psychological state formerly known as “paranoia” should be no longer defined as a mental illness? Asylums all across the country are filled with people whose only neurosis is the vague feeling that they are being spied on or followed by unseen powerful enemies. But now we know that everyone is being spied on every time they pick up the phone, buy something, use the Internet, or walk around in public — so it turns out that these “paranoid” patients aren’t delusional after all. It seems rather unfair to lock us them up and classify us them as crazy if our vague feelings of being stalked by the government turned out to be true.

To make sure you get this message, may I also say 9/11 Eric Holder birth certificate Bill Ayers drone Orwell Anonymous leak.

And in conclusion, just in case your algorithm has gotten overloaded, I’d like to not mention my private, personal opinions about the Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and Ninth Amendment (and you really don’t want to know what I think about the Sixteenth Amendment). For more information, please read the Fifth Amendment.

Thank you.

— zombie

PS — Tell the IRS that the best times for for my upcoming audit are Tuesdays and Thursdays, but unannounced visits from the EPA, FBI, OSHA or ATF would be more convenient on Monday afternoons or Wednesday mornings. And, needless to say, you can eavesdrop any ol’ time.